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BBC apologises over gay execution debate

The BBC has apologised after complaints about an online debate which asked: "Should homosexuals face execution?" in response to proposed anti-gay legislation in Uganda.

Critics flooded the British broadcaster's website after it launched the provocative debate ahead of a World Service Africa Have Your Say feature.

The headline question asking if gays should face execution was later changed to: "Should Uganda debate gay laws?" and the BBC World Service admitted the original version overstepped the mark.

"The original headline on our website was, in hindsight, too stark. We apologise for any offence it caused," the director of BBC World Service, Peter Horrocks, said in a blog on Thursday.

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But he insisted: "It's important that this does not detract from what is a crucial debate for Africans and the international community.

"The program was a legitimate and responsible attempt to support a challenging discussion about proposed legislation that advocates the death penalty for those who undertake certain homosexual activities in Uganda."

Some British politicians criticised the move.

"We should be condemning it, and the BBC should be condemning it, just as we do sexual violence in the Congo or genocide in Rwanda or Darfur," said Eric Joyce of the ruling Labour party.

"Instead, it seems to have thought it appropriate to come up with something that suggests it's a subject for discussion," he told the House of Commons.

Under the draft Ugandan law, any individual who promotes homosexuality could be sent to jail.

The bill compels any person of authority to report known homosexual activity to the police and imposes the death penalty in cases of rape of a minor by a person of the same sex, or where one partner is HIV positive.

But senior government officials have said the death penalty provision will be reviewed in parliament.